He wanted to become an engineer since his childhood, perhaps even before reaching his teens. It was not easy to get into an Engineering college those days so he had to toil, stop his extra curricular activities and concentrate on studies. The hard-work paid off, now, he was pursuing his engineering and it was a dream coming true. He asked himself now what? Well, let us enjoy this education and become an engineer what else?

With passage of each year, the question of “now what” become more prominent. He wondered what next? He thought to take up administrative services as his next goal. He filled the form, UPSC responded – instead of the admit card they had sent a letter – “your age is less than 20 years as of 31st July so you cannot take this exam in the current year.” He could have waited one more year but then his father was about to get retired in few years so except finding a job nothing could come to his mind. So, he set another goal, crack campus interview. By grace of God or he was lucky or may be because of his abilities he could secure a job on campus without much difficulty. He still had couple of months on campus to complete his final year. He was happy he got what he wanted. Though this pleasure was short lived, his mind started playing tricks with him again – “Now, you have a job what next?”

He was a dreamer, ambitious and committed person. So, he kept on feeding to his mind – “I will work hard, prove myself.” So, the mind probing – “You have achieved what you set as your goals without much of difficulty so sure you will get those too, but what next?” He responded to the mind – “well, I would get promoted faster than anyone else!” Mind was in no mood to end the questioning – “What after that?” He said – “I will buy Hyundai Santro. Work hard, get promoted, buy Honda City. work harder buy a house. Work hard, get promoted buy a bigger house.” He couldn’t think beyond these simple cycles of Work hard, get promoted buy car, buy house and again go back to work hard. So the mind said – “Ok! you would get retired one day doing all this, isnt it?” What after that? Why are you going to do all this? What is the purpose? Can’t one survive in smaller house? Can’t one be happy in smaller home? Can one go beyond becoming a CEO? What next? Is there an end to your carving? Is there a full stop? Why are you doing or planning to do everything? What is driving you? He slept questioning this to himself.

He started asking himself – “Why I do what I do?” “What is the purpose of my life?” He came and asked me – “Dada (elder brother in some Indian languages), whats happening? Why we run around, except filling two square meal in stomach, do we have any bigger goal in life? Is there something beyond the physical world that we should strive for?”

I asked him – What is the purpose of your life? He said – “I wanted to be an engineer, now I am completing engineering. Next thing came in my mind was a job. Thankfully I got that too in campus interviews, but now I am questioning myself what next? why? How? What for?”

I told him – there are various reasons you are running from one goal to the other. These can be put in bigger buckets such as – emotions, social acceptance, materialistic wealth. I cannot say why you wanted to be an engineer but when you set that goal you attached your emotions to that goal – you were “Happy” or you got a “sense of satisfaction” when you achieved it. Than that was in your hand, you didn’t bother about becoming an engineer – because you were doing engineering and there was no way you couldn’t get it any further. So your mind wandered – what next? The next thing came to you was social acceptance as in, job security. Than materialistic goal of car and home and bigger cars & homes. Your mind kept on pursuing these thoughts – that is great. Most of the time people never think beyond first level (“of owning a car to what next”) of these thoughts. But it was good that you could somehow get confused and couldn’t get to the end of your running around. Even if you think you would be satisfied, happy and socially respected when you get something, become somebody that happiness or satisfaction will be short-lived.

I added – let me try to put these in further perspective – when you decided about a goal you feverishly ran to just get their. You missed the pasture in the race by just checking the milestones – “how much is left? Instead of enjoying the beauty of where you were standing.” I believe purpose of life is not just running from one point to the other making them as your goals. If you think of doing this; your goal will always be a moving target. No doubt you should have some or the other target, why not? But the purpose of your life should be being in present, staying satisfied with whatever you have, doing what best you could do to achieve your goals and yet you should not be feverish about your targets. When you die, you will leave everything here – your Hyundai Santro or Honda City or for that matter the big home you think you will buy when you are 55 (perhaps 34 years in the future!). You know Krishna said in the Geeta –

You’ve a right to perform your prescribed action, but you’re not entitled to the fruits of your action. Never consider yourself the cause of the results your activities, and never be associated to not doing your duty.

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So just do things, enjoy your journey, dont be feverish about collecting flags, batches or medals. Because whenever you have some medal as your goal, your subtle wish is happiness or satisfaction of getting that. So, basically your purpose is more to be happy or be satisfied. My learning in all these years has been – happiness and satisfaction cannot be achieved while your mind runs outside. You can be happy and satisfied when you are in the NOW.

Your purpose in life can be anything – set the target, plan and execute. Why worry about future, be in the present, be happy and satisfied. Happiness and satisfaction lie in the present not in the future not in achieving the goal.

Disclaimer – Please do not make a goal of bothering anyone else. Actually teachings of many religion – a very strong teaching of Jainism – is not to harm others. So when you set a goal (or try to make a purpose of life) do not set it as killing others becoming a e.g. terrorist, at least consciously.

Purpose of my life – be Zorba the Buddha. Be in the present, enjoy life to the fullest and yet be completely aware about it. It is not something to be achieved, it is something to be lived. That is what I think “enlightenment” is.

This is an LBC (Loose Bloggers Consortium) blog post, check Ramana Uncleji’s take on this weeks topic here and another perspective from Shackman uncleji is here Link.

I was watching Gulal (A Hindi Movies by Anurag Kashyap) yesterday, somehow, it is available on Youtube.

That movie revolves around State of Rajasthan, kings of that state and their wish to get independent Rajasthan – independent from India. At first it sounds very weird, as the story unfolds different characters start playing their strategies for their own benefits. Whatever happens in the movie, that movie reminded me of Brexit – British Exit from the European Union.

After watching the movie, I was going through the documents of European Union. EU came into existence after two consecutive world wars. The wars which involved almost the whole world but centered around Europe. Just imagine a Europe between 1920 to 1938 (between the two world wars, or the Europe just after 1945. There was enmity, conflicts and the fight for economic dominance. This all actually ended with economic agreement! Isn’t it interesting?

The foundation of EU was more on economic development, social development – let me call it human development. Quote from EU website – “The EU regional policy starts to transfer huge sums of money to create jobs and infrastructure in poorer areas.” Such a wonderful concept that people can cross man-made borders, do business without trouble and follow one set of rules yet their countries do not lose their identity. Just imagine all European countries making a team to compete in Olympics or Fifa world cup!

The EU regional policy starts to transfer huge sums of money to create jobs and infrastructure in poorer areas.

The union started 21st century with a couple of aims – Peace in member states, Citizen’s security, economic and social solidarity. Such lofty goals require enormous efforts. These efforts at times become lobbying for one or the other. No doubt there may have been political and business interest groups who might be trying to get better deals or benefits for themselves. This type of lobbying – or cheating in some ways – can only be stopped when there is genuine connect to develop others and heartfelt desire to help those in need. EU adds close to 20% to the world GDP, what is more important to note is – its population is only is only 7% of the world population.

Just imagine if we get to see such geographic unions in other parts of the world, such as South East Asian Union or South American Union. These type of geopolitical, economical and social unions would require building trust first. A caution the union must only be on two fronts – economic development and social welfare. No! don’t even think of religion – religion is and must be an individual pursuit, those who make religion a group’s belief they mostly want to gain power. Also, religion is only used mostly for generating fear in the heart and mind of followers.

The movie Gulal had a very selfish and political motive. Can we compare that story of Gulal with British Exit from European Union? At times my mind says yes and other times no. No because it was a democratic decision, based on votes from common people. The statistics says older people were not in favor of remaining in EU. Reason – they were getting affected in many respect on personal level. By the way, these old people are the same who had benefited some or the other ways from being a part of EU.

My mind says yes because who says canvassing was not done? Who says there was no political motives, selfish goals? Who can deny all these? It has repeatedly proved that we select being individually smart and therefore we are collectively dumb – British exit from EU is an example of the same. Though we may argue that parts of Britain was against it and 51 to 49 cannot be generalized.

Also heard that those who voted against were fearful of immigrants. I wonder how big is the problem of immigrants in Britain! Of late, the fear of immigrant is evident in a way – every morning I am waking up to a city trending on twitter. There is some or the other attack at some place, European Union was built for peace and social uplifting – not for terrorist attacks.

My question came a full circle from the movie Gulal to British Exit to Gulal again – What drives people? What drives an individual? Ambition, selfishness or fear? I wish in future we would not be driven fear and selfishness and, in future we would see such union and countries coming together to prosper together, instead of people terrorizing and killing fellow human beings. This wish includes economic and social development – religion is a very personal affair, it should not come on streets and should not be forced.

Disclaimer – Author supports such collaboration and unification as done by the European Union. Such unions would one day make our world more connected and the interdependence will help us embrace each other with our respect, trust and support to each other as fellow human being rather than black or white, European or Asian or for that matter capitalist or socialist. We indeed are interdependent.

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